Oh, I am SO glad I'm going to miss the safety inspection this Thursday at the preschool where I work. I'll be safely out of the country, thank goodness. Because I might say rude things to the safety inspection lady in front of the children despite my usually mild-mannered self.
It's not just me and my co-workers. Everybody in the child-care business is starting to grumble around here. The new safety laws are getting a little freaky, and I'm getting very choked at each new thing that they say we're going to lose.
We haven't even had the evil inspection lady come yet (just some nasty form letters), but we've already had to close our swings, our slide, and any piece of equipment that is "elevated" off the ground. Our little darlins' aren't going to have any sort of climber for much longer I fear.
ANYTHING by Little Tykes or Fisher-Price, blanket-rule: gone. It doesn't matter if it's brand-new and safety-approved for the rest of Canada. It doesn't matter if it was perfectly safe when they inspected six months ago when we bought it for eight hundred dollars--now its not approved for "commercial" use and so, no more.
The new VIHA laws are going to make it very hard for any daycare or place with a playground to have nice equipment....The climber we are probably going to lose once cost our centre almost ten thousand dollars. I've been very priveleged to work in a place where the playground is the envy of toddlers everywhere.
It's VERY frustrating when the children ask us why we won't let them play on anything. We're blaming it on the Safety Lady. They probably think she's got horns by now. Maybe she does.
My boss is grinding her teeth. She believes in keeping children safe, of course,probably more than the next person, but even she is shaking her head. "Maybe we should just wrap the children in bubble-wrap before we send them out to play!"
Grrr! Whatever happened to the concept of "healthy risks" that they taught us in the early childhood education courses? What about the value of climbing and swinging for large motor development?
Makes us all wonder how we managed to survive our own childhoods, what with all the biking without helmets and climbing about in tree forts!
Bah! Bah, I say!
3 comments:
To say nothing of the knives and sharpened sticks!
Why, it's a miracle we all made it through with both eyes!
Hey, yeah, I forgot about the sharpened sticks! Geez, we weren't very safety-wise were we? :)
Hey, I'm a mom in Kits looking for decent childcare part-time for a (now) 19 month old. Got any suggestions? I didn't even know about these new safety laws. People have become odd.
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